ack-and-white house. He put the
shutter back after he had passed through, and carefully drawing the
window to behind him, without actually closing it, he took a turn or two
upon the bowling-green, and then walked off in the direction of the
Slumberleigh woods.

After the lapse of an hour or more he returned as quietly as he had
gone, let himself in, made all secure, and stole up to his room.

CHAPTER VII.

Vandon was considered by many people to be the most beautiful house in
----shire.

In these days of great brand-new imitation of intensely old houses,
where the amount of ground covered measures the purse of the builder, it
is pleasant to come upon a place like Vandon, a quiet old manor-house,
neither large nor small, built of ancient bricks, blent to a dim purple
and a dim red by that subtle craftsman Time.

Whoever in the years that were no more had chosen the place whereon to
build had chosen well. Vandon stood on the slope of a gentle hill,
looking across a sweep of green valley to the rising woods beyond, which
in days gone by had been a Roman camp, and where the curious might still
trace the wide ledges cut among the regular lines of the trees.

Some careful hand had planned the hanging gardens in front of the house,
which fell away to the stream below. Flights of wide stone steps led
down from terrace to terrace, each built up by its south wall covered
with a wealth of jasmine and ivy and climbing roses. But all was wild
and deserted now. Weeds had started up between the stone slabs of the
steps, and the roses blossomed out sweet and profuse, for it was the
time of roses, amid convolvulus and campion. The quaint old dove-cot
near the house had almost disappeared behind the trees that had crowded
up round it, and held aloft its weathercock in silent protest at their
encroachment. The stables close at hand, with their worn-out clock and
silent bell, were tenantless. The coach-houses were full of useless old
chariots and carriages. Into one splendid court coach the pigeons had
found their way through an open window, and had made nests, somewhat to
the detriment of the green-and-white satin fittings.

Great cedars, bent beneath the weight of years, grew round the house.
The patriarch among them had let fall one of his gnarled supplicating
arms in the winter, and there it still lay where it had fallen.

Anything more out of keeping with the dignified old place than its owner
could hardly be imagined